Syracuse-area highway crews ready for winter blast -- as usual

Syracuse, NY -- Highway departments around Syracuse are preparing for this afternoon's expected snowstorm with the air of professionals who have been there and done that through a lot of Central New York winters.

“It’s business as usual. This is no big deal for this area,” said Marty Piper, highway maintenance supervisor at Onondaga County’s Marcellus garage.

“We started at 4 a.m. with these few unexpected inches we got going on,” Piper said.

The main battle should come this afternoon and evening, when the storm is expected to get stronger, producing up to 3 inches of snow per hour.

“Once the snow starts coming down faster than we can plow it off, it will impact traffic,” Piper said. “You start to get into the 1, 2, 3 inches an hour, that’s more than anyone can keep up with -- that’s almost more than you can keep up with in your driveway.”

In Cortland County, Highway Superintendent Don Chambers has ordered plow blades to be mounted on seven county dump trucks. They won’t be able to salt and sand the roads, but they will help the county’s 13 regular snowplows push snow off the pavement and shorten the time between plowings, he said.

“Usually we don’t have to do this unless we’re going to get a major event,” Chambers said. “I don’t foresee a significant problem. But (the storm) will require additional manpower and equipment to be utilized.”

At Madison County’s Wampsville highway garage, workers spent part of the early morning hours figuring out how much salt and stone dust to put down with each pass, said Dan DeGroat, the facility’s assistant supervisor. The day, for them, started at 3 a.m.

“We stay at it pretty good,” DeGroat said. “We can only go around so many times during the day. We’ll go until it’s over.”